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{marks} tricia stirling As I write this, I know I mustn’t make a mistake. I will not allow my finger to touch the delete key. I have too many words on my body as it is. I miss handwriting. I miss Letters on the page. My emotions, truth. Back in junior high school, when I wrote lots of notes to my friends, I made many mistakes, and I crossed many things out. But the mistakes were still there, still a part of the whole. If someone really wanted to, they could read through the xxxxxxxxs. I crossed out words deliberately. I didn’t want my friends to think I was trying to conceal truths. But like everyone else, I’ve stopped writing letters and started sending out emails. And I’ve made the mistake of wondering too many times what happens to those extra words, deleted. Angry words. Sloppy ones. The truth. Where does it go? I bet people in junior high school still handwrite their letters. One can’t pass emails in class, can one? Probably they can, but I hope they still pass notes. That might keep them pure, their skin clean. I am a mess. I am a canvas of deletions. I’m a mistake. Before this, I prided myself on not having any tattoos. The only one of my girlfriends not to go out and get a goddamn butterfly inked on her ass. I guess I’m old fashioned—I blame it on having been raised by my grandmother. I’ve never admired tattoos at all. They are the stuff of sailors and bikers and men. These tattoos on my skin are not me. Only they are words I once typed. Words I regretted. They are written in the font of Arial. I know. I checked them against my computer screen. That I can no longer go out in public shouldn’t come as a surprise. Although my face is unmarked. Still, my hands, my fingers, my neck. Maybe when winter comes. Maybe then. And for now, I can only be here, where I am, in a white room in the attic of my home. I am happy that Safeway will deliver my groceries. So happy for modern conveniences. I don’t have to take my garbage to the dump. Someone comes to carry it away for me each Wednesday. I don’t have to make the trip to the library. I can order things from Amazon.com. But I do miss people. I speak to no one. I send emails to my friends. I type my emails slow, deliberate. I hold a dictionary on my lap, to ensure I don’t spell one false word. I could not bear another mistake. My flesh it is covered in a litany of erasures. What will happen to me, I wonder, when the words are finally and truly erased. At night, I dream of swimming through dark pools of ink. My body blackening with language. So that it smites me out. So that it burns my flesh. Words, careless ones, the word surprize so ubiquitously carved because it is the one word I could never spell correctly. I dream of blackboards, white chalk. An opening. During the day, I think of skeletons and melted muted flesh. I wear my regrets like tight clothing. And yet... One could say I was chosen for this fate. Me and my fear of false language. My fear of lies. My body so opposed to them. My body having known a lie or two. And so this is my requiem. So dramatic a word. Yet I cannot delete it. I fear for my unmarked face. I think it is a shame that it had to be this way. I would have been content sticking with junior high school notes, written in peacock or teal ink, carefully folded to resemble a tiny house. The way boys were to us girls. Mysteries, not things we knew too well. Not answers before the question could even be asked. Once I made my own paper out of pulp and rose petals. It seemed so delicate an operation, yet the paper came out thick, chunky. I wrote out a note on the thick page and gave it to a man. The note contained words such as only, promise, forever. Love. The skin of the paper tore slightly when I pressed against it with my pen. I wonder, do I still have the capacity to bleed? My room grows cold, but I don’t cover up. I wear nothing but a pair of tattered underwear that remind me of nothing, of no one. I bend my body like a wire hanger. Curving the palm of my hand. I am editing myself out. I no longer desire these emotions. Finally I can allow my errors to speak for themselves. And when I die, will someone read my body? And will they think: it must mean something. |
